The Surrey‑based auction, conducted by Ewbank’s on November 4, 2025, turned a forgotten £20 boot‑sale haul into a rare‑comics spectacle, netting £63,440 from 47 copies of the 1988 ‘This Island Bradman’ issue.
Those comics were originally commissioned by businessman Godfrey Bradman for his son Daniel’s bar mitzvah, with eight pages written by David Levin and penciled by Curt Swan and Angelo Torres. Only about 200 copies were produced, and after the event, 48 were meant to be discarded, yet a clean‑up crew kept them, and they eventually resurfaced.
The anonymous collector bought the box for £20 at a car‑boot sale about a decade ago, stashing it in his loft. It wasn’t until the COVID lockdown that he opened the crate, discovered the comics, and, after researching their rarity, listed one on eBay, which sold for £750.
Ewbank’s set a pre‑auction estimate of £35,000, but the lot sold for almost £50,000 on the hammer, and with buyer fees the total climbed to £63,440. The copies varied in condition, with some graded CGC 9.6, underscoring the quality that drove the premium.
Ewbank’s will publish a detailed catalog of the sold lots next week, and the sale is already sparking renewed interest in the private‑commission Superman series, a find that could prompt other collectors to dig into forgotten storerooms.